“I am frozen by a mass which supports me. My elbow sinks into it. It is the horse's belly; its rigid leg obliquely bars the narrow circle from which my eyes cannot escape. Ah, it is dead! It seems to me that my breast is empty, yet still there is an echo in my heart. What I am looking for is life.”

—  Henri Barbusse

Light (1919), Ch. XV - An Apparition

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 2, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I am frozen by a mass which supports me. My elbow sinks into it. It is the horse's belly; its rigid leg obliquely bars …" by Henri Barbusse?
Henri Barbusse photo
Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935

Related quotes

Adam Mickiewicz photo

“My heart stopped, my breast frozen, my lips and eyes barred. Still in the world, but not of the world. Here, yet already departed.”

Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady

Serce ustało pierś już lodowata, ścięły się usta i oczy zawarły; Na świecie jeszcze, lecz już nie dla świata. Cóż to za człowiek - Umarły
Part one.
Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

“When I am laid, am laid in earth,
May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.”

Nahum Tate (1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright

Dido and Aeneas (opera; music by Henry Purcell)

Homér photo

“Not iron, trust me,
the heart within my breast. I am all compassion.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

V. 190–191 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

John of St. Samson photo

“Of what sort is this truth in its accomplishment in us both, your spouses cannot lay their eyes on me without seeing that I am your cherished and unique bride, by the evident and manifest signs of your radiant and exuberant love, which manifestly flow from me to you, whether I perceive them or not, yet all my desire is to be perpetually within, hidden and known only to you who are my Bridegroom, my Life and my All.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Epithalamium

“I laughed as we turned in a tight circle… "Tonight you're all mine."

Jake smiled but looked me dead in the eye. "No. From now on."

My heart skipped. "What?"

"Yours," he said simply, "from now on.”

Kieran Scott (1974) American writer

Source: She's So Dead to Us

The Mother photo

“It seems to me that I am being born into a new life and that all the methods and habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what was once a result is now only a preparation … It is as if I was stripped of all my past, of my errors as well as my conquests, as if all that had disappeared to give place to one new-born whose whole existence has yet to take shape … An immense gratitude rises from my heart. I seem to have at last arrived at the threshold which I have long sought.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

How she felt when she sat down at the feet of Sri Aurobindo, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo" and also in The Mother (of Sri Aurobindo Ashram) Prema Nandakumar of National Book Trust, India, (1977) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=R1sqAAAAYAAJ, p. 23

Albert Einstein photo

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Statement to German anti-Nazi diplomat and author Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein around 1941, as quoted in his book Towards the Further Shore : An Autobiography (1968)
Attributed in posthumous publications

Mariah Carey photo

“It seems as though I've always been,
somebody outside looking in,
well, here I am for all of them to bleed,
but they can't take my heart from me,
and they can't bring me to my knees,
they'll never know the real me.”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"Looking In", Daydream, 1995
Lyrics

William Mulock photo

“I'm still at work with my hand to the plough and my face to the future. The shadows of evening … lengthen about me but morning is in my heart. … the testimony I bear is this: that the castle of enchantment is not yet behind me, it is before me still and daily I catch glimpses of its battlements and towers. The best of life is always further on. The real lure is hidden from our eyes, somewhere behind the hills of time.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

At age 87, [A Complimentary Luncheon to The Right Honourable Sir William Mulock …, The Empire Club of Canada Addresses, http://speeches.empireclub.org/60525/data, 13 February 1930]

Related topics